Don’t Bother Your Pretty Little Head

Jamie Dimon has publicly asked whether or not Senator Elizabeth Warren understands the global banking system. This is, of course, nonsense, but this kind of attack is often used on anyone the financial world considers the naive. And by naive, they mean anyone who doesn’t sympathize with their wants, desires and their ways of making money. As you can see from the quote below from “Think Progress,” Warren taught corporate law at Harvard University and published nine books among other significant qualifications. I agree with her that what upsets the financial world epitomized by the likes of Jamie Dimon isn’t that she doesn’t understand what they do but that she understands all too well what they do.

Of course, Dimon has experience foreign and unique that Warren will probably never have. His firm has agreed to billions of dollars of fines for illegal activities while he was in charge. Leading an institution that has repeatedly broken the law provides a man with a unique take on financial transactions, I’m sure.

Is it naive to question the money making techniques of the giant, “too big to fail” financial institutions? Undoubtedly the denizens of these firms view themselves as job and wealth creators doing God’s work. And who are we that would question that? Let me respond with a question of my own – who are you that your “work” is guaranteed with taxpayer dollars, literally trillions of taxpayers’ dollars? – Who are you that when you make mistakes doing “God’s work,” that the public loans you billions of dollars to save your firms from your own incompetence? Who are you who deliberately and with full awareness of the law break that law, not once but over and over again? And why is it that when you do tens of billions of dollars of damage to this nation and other nations, the worst thing that happens to you is a fine?

That God’s work analogy is in a way correct for these financial institutions do seem to have some kind of divine intervention saving them from failure and jail.

And when investment bankers get this kind of treatment, this loving application of government protection and a gentle massage of warm taxpayer dollars, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that we get statements like “I don’t know if she fully understands the global banking system.”

Those of us who don’t get this loving treatment, who lack armies of lobbyists, millions in campaign contributions and never get to play golf with the President, must seem foolish in comparison.

By Thursday, Warren already had a response. Speaking on the Huffington Post’s “So, That Happened” podcast, she said, “The problem is not that I don’t understand the global banking system. The problem for these guys is that I fully understand the system and I understand how they make their money. And that’s what they don’t like about me.”

Warren’s résumé comes with nearly 20 years of experience teaching corporate law at Harvard University, publishing nine books, chairing the Congressional Oversight Panel that oversaw the bank bailouts in 2008 (of which JP Morgan was a beneficiary), and coming up with the idea for and helping to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has already helped consumers avoid numerous predatory lending schemes and recouped more than $4.8 billion through its enforcement actions.

Explain to me how J.P Morgan after paying out billions in fines due to illegal activity still employs the same C.E.O? Jamie Dimon might very well be one of those non-violent psychopaths who doesn’t care about rules and regulations, only his own ambition and greed. I wish that we had more lawmakers who were as intelligent, principled and courageous as Senator Elizabeth Warren. I couldn’t take Jamie Dimon’s words seriously when he tried to insult Senator Warren, she is a Harvard Bankruptcy Professor, she set up the CFPB, her creation which is helping a lot of people, she is a double threat because she can decipher and translate finance speak so that the people understand, she has lifted the veil and Jamie Dimon hates it. …